A while back on reddit, /u/TheBishopsBane posted some maps that were available for people to use in creating conworlds. I've taken two of them for the two continents of my world.

The eastern continent:

Spoiler:

The western continent:

Spoiler:

Here is a tentative linguistic map of the eastern continent. I'm not entirely sure if I like these distributions or not.

Spoiler:

(Roughly) from west to east:

Purple: The Raholg languages. This language family is noted for its triconsonantal-root morphology. Raholg proper makes meaningful distinctions between fortis and lenis variants of the consonants in the root (e.g., stop vs. fricative).

Red: The Tim Ar-O languages. One could call this family a linguistic success story due to the Tim Ar Imperium spreading it across most of the north of the continent. (Ironically, Tim Ar is the most conservative branch of the family.)

Sea green: The Çuvvaccos languages. The Çuvvaccos languages, which include Çuvvaccoçim and Chuzvacsacham, are noted for their direct-inverse alignment and the lack of alveolars in some of the languages.

White: The Täptäg languages. I admittedly haven't done much with these languages.

Gray: The Macro-Kgáweq' languages. Polysynthetic and featuring version à la Georgian as well as a success affix.

Blue: The Ban De languages. These language generally have larger consonant inventories and some feature switch-reference.

Orange: The Caber languages. You can follow the development of these languages and their logographic system in the appropriate thread.

Magenta: The Tlar Càna languages. Many are tonal (the inspiration for the Tlar Canà dialects proper was Viet-Muong).

Light red: The Taltic languages (one in the middle of Caber territory, one to the east of it). A moribund language family whose protolanguage had a small phoneme inventory, its traces mostly live on as substrate influence in the Caber, Ban De, Tlar Canà, and Tlusa languages.

Black: The Macro-Put'po languages. These languages' protolanguage featured complex onsets which developed differently in various languages, so a list of cognates can look somewhat surprising due to different consonants being dropped from the onset.

Dark green: The Banagarinimo languages. I worked a little on Banagarinimo a few years ago but have lost most of my materials on it—perhaps that's for the better as I have more experience now.

Yellow: The Xiaoxiao languages. Again, I haven't worked on these much beyond the name.

And a few I forgot to include in the map (of course):

The Tlusa languages. Inspired by Lakes Plain, the phonology of the protolanguage was /*p *b *t *d *c *ɟ *k *g/ /*u *o *a *e *i/. I did some work on these languages when I was in Roswell but again I've lost most of my materials on it. These would most likely be placed between the Tlar Canà and Banagarinimo languages.

An as-yet unnamed family. The goal of this family is to include subtractive morphology.

Between the two continents, to the west of the eastern continent and to the east of the western one, lies a small chain of volcanic islands. That they were even found in the first place was kind of a fluke, but the big one is known simply as the Rock.

What basically happened was that a group from the eastern continent, analogous to whalers in our 17th Century, were hunting in the area and found the islands. It's the only land for quite a ways and was immediately claimed. It took a while but it eventually became known as a point to resupply food stores and find alcohol. The Tim Ar eventually took control of it and maintain it to the present day of the setting; they kind of operate it at a loss but it's sort of a matter of pride to them. Life there is much like how I understand it is on Hawaii—expensive and rather isolated.

The Rock shows some signs of having been inhabited in the past, but it was apparently abandoned. Theories on this range from volcanic activity to exhausting the available food supply on the island.

The Rock also has a role to play in what was basically the first contact between the continents. The story goes that about a decade after the Rock was discovered, before it had a permanent settlement, there was a ship that was lost in a storm, with only one survivor. He ended up in the area where he was found by a ship from the western continent, which lagged behind a bit in terms of exploration and was only just starting to explore that far out, and taken in. He was viewed as a bit of an oddity and after a few years picked up the language of his rescuers, winding up as a member of a royal court. He was fond of throwing messages in bottles into the sea on the remote chance that anyone from back home would find them.

Now, the Rock lies in a position where the current goes from west to east, so one of the bottles ended up back at the Rock, where it was found by another whaling ship. The message changed hands and eventually made its way to a friend of his who immediately set down plans for a large ship, one capable of holding its own on a voyage much longer than usual. The world being round was known already, but many still saw the venture as a fool's errand—after all, how many other islands could there be in the middle of the ocean and why haven't they met anyone from there already? Nevertheless, they set off.

After quite a while, they found another ship from the other continent, and hailed it in the usual way, by a cannon blast. It should be noted that "the usual way" refers to how things are done on the eastern continent, and that this terrified the crew of the western boat, who saw a large and utterly foreign ship coming at them with an apparent aim to attack them and immediately surrendered.

Strangely, the boarding party didn't seem interested in looting the boat; this eased tensions somewhat. The lost person's friend thrust the note at the crew, who recognized the writing as that of the weird guy in the court, and to make a long story short they soon retrieved the guy. Thus began the exchange of cultures that, after a few hundred years, led to a war that almost saw most of the eastern continent conquered.

Apologies if this doesn't strictly-speaking belong here, but I wanted to make a note of some phonologies that I came up with but am not going to devote too much time to right now other than to note that they exist. The number at the top indicates the gleb seed it's from; an asterisk means it's been modified.

1790697860*—I don't do much with prenasalization. Perhaps this would be a good exercise for it.

1757209838*, something for the eastern continent. Kind of a redo of an earlier language for which I lost the materials on. I remember it had /kp/, a generally small inventory, and the word fplor (IIRC it meant "weather").

I'd like to head any potential flamewars off at the pass before we begin, so here's a little out-of-universe background on the Tlar Canà: Before I decided to make two separate continents instead of one supercontinent, I had conceived of the patriarchy/matriarchy split as occurring on the northwest and southeast halves, respectively, of the original landmass. The matriarchal Tlar Canà were to have been the foil of the Schwarzenegger-esque, manly-man patriarchy of the Tim Ar.
So. A little bit about the Tlar Canà, about whom I talked a bit in the previous post.

The Tlar Canà were originally patriarchal and lived in the southeast of the eastern continent. I haven't worked out the details of the climate yet but I'm hoping to put a jungle or rainforest there and if I can I'd have it rain a lot, at least in Mȍy Bǎȍn.

After first contact was established, there was a remarkable lack of colonialist sentiment on the eastern continent. At least, that was how it was in practice—it certainly existed, but the various Täptäg principalities, which were located on the western coast and were therefore close to the western continent (relatively speaking), started engaging in trade there, and everybody liked how the money flowed in. Most serious plans at colonization of the western continent were therefore arrested; the inhabitants of that continent were generally viewed as some mix of curious, quirky, backward, insufferable, culturally alien, and good for business. (It should be noted that the history of the Rock and the associated archipelago is rather complex and involved multiple changes of hands until the Tim Ar finally steamrolled in and took it over, basically turning it into some mix of Hawaii and Tristan da Cunha.)

At this point I would like to remind y'all about the basic cultural difference between the continents: The civilizations on the eastern continent tended to be more patriarchal in structure, whereas those on the western continent tended more towards matriarchy.

On the western continent, circumstances were different. On the eastern coast, where the early contact occurred, there were no primarily trade-driven polities like the Täptäg city-states (nobody had figured out that you could get to the continent from the other side yet). Several powerful empires existed (such as those of the Waqwaq/Wohoq and, pertinently, the Jädawan) and they had no qualms about invading these new lands to increase their holdings. Eventually someone figured out that the world was round but small enough that you could reach the other continent from the other way in a reasonable amount of time.

Initial attempts at colonization began with the Xiaoxiao, on that big island in the eastern sea; I'm not sure yet how they panned out. The Jädawan eventually made some inroads onto the mainland. They ended up setting up a colony of some permanence in Tlar Canà land and began rewriting the culture. Under their rule they gradually installed a matriarchy. The matriarchy took hold most deeply in the land of the Tlar Canà, to the extent that even after four hundred years of decolonization and propaganda efforts by the Tim Ar, the new social order is still in place. Males are generally treated like second-class citizens, good only for labor, procreation, and running into gunfire (cf. the barefoot-and-pregnant stereotype in human societies); this treatment extends to language as well—male speech realizes syllable-initial /tl/ as an affricate [tɬ], whereas female speech generally features a stop-liquid sequence, and a big deal is made of these differences in articulation.

The Tlar Canà are basically the rump state of the Jädawan on the eastern continent—think Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They are the major power broker on that side of the landmass. This being said, they are more like a loose conglomeration of ethnically-related people clustered around a few regional power centers that fight each other for power; there are three of note: Mȍy Bǎȍn, Ngòynâ, and Nǐcúwār.

Mȍy Bǎȍn, the "Golden City", is the largest of the three, and wields the most influence, though its power is declining. The dialect spoken there is considered the standard or prestige dialect. For most intents and purposes it is the capital city of the whole political unit.

Ngòynâ is the second-largest and second-most powerful. Two of its claims to fame are a well-regarded institution of higher learning and a very old and large library system.

Nǐcúwār is the odd one out, but is gaining power. The treatment of males there is not as severe as it is in regions dominated by Mȍy Bǎȍn or Ngòynâ, and males who have been treated particularly badly often try to escape to here or to an allied area. The women's speech there realizes syllable-initial /tl/ as [dl], further alienating them in the eyes of the other regions.
The big war in history, the World War II of the setting, was the one between the Tim Ar and the Jädawan. It occurred when technology was more or less comparable to the WWII-era, but lasted for about forty years.

The Tim Ar were not even a coherent polity just prior to it. At that point they were still a scattered group of small states and city-states that happened to more-or-less share a common language and lineage. They, however, looked at the Jädawan encroachment with trepidation—as I said above, they were a bunch of Schwarzenegger-esque patriarchal states, and to them, the matriarchy was repulsive, and it was on their doorstep. This outside pressure stopped them from fighting with each other enough to band together under the leader of a military general; he became the first Imperator. The goal wasn't even to completely destroy the Jädawan, but rather to force them off the continent and return to the prior status quo, such as it was.

There were imperialistic aspects to the war, and in the decades following the Tim Ar gobbled up more land to the north and east. I haven't decided the reasoning but the southern regions were mostly left alone; the Baigas were installed as a buffer state, and their government has been periodically ousted and replaced ever since.

Here's a rough climate map of the world; the color scheme is more or less from here. I'll probably have to redo the political and linguistic maps in light of this as well as the history. The long mountain range on the eastern continent has a name that translates to "Burning Mountains", which is a reference to one of my favorite albums.

I've been doing some thinking lately about how Tim Ar writing developed (as well as the writing for my eight-phoneme conlang, but that's another matter). Proto-Tim Ar-O had no native writing system (at least in this iteration), and I therefore envisioned the speakers constituting a state like the Inca Empire was, which then collapsed. I don't want the Tim Ar inventing, for example, an alphasyllabary out of nothing, but I also want to maintain my current scripts for them.

One option would be to have the historical majority of writing be in some other prestige language. The problem is that the Tim Ar are pretty staunch nationalists and wouldn't take kindly to this. Perhaps if they were originally absorbed into some other empire that eventually destabilized and collapsed, leaving a bunch of smaller polities (like the ones they originated from)…

Another might be to have them invent a regular syllabary first. This, though, would require that I make one for an earlier stage of the language. Tim Ar is supposed to be conservative in regards to language change (especially phonological change). I was about to say I didn't care much for this option, but it occurs to me that there would be fewer vowels in the earlier stage of the language, and this might pave the way for reforms once the vowel shifts occurred. Unfortunately for me I would need around 3750 symbols (at least!).

The next option is beginning with logograms. I already have my hands full with Caber, Waqwaq, and a couple other projects I want to develop some more (or start in the first place).

Another option—hieroglyphics. This is the least-desirable, because I feel that, if I'm following the Egyptian example, I'd need quite a few, possibly even more than with the syllabary.

Realistically, all writing should arise from drawings/hieroglyphic, I think - unless it is copied from an existing writing system.

So if you want them to have invented writing independently, hieroglyphs and their further simplification into whatever system you want is the way to go. (Even cuneiform was a simplification of earlier hieroglyph-like drawings.)

But if Tim Ar were in contact with another civilization which knew writing (I am not quite sure from your descriptions), they would most likely take an existing writing system and adjust it to their own language.

gestaltist wrote:Realistically, all writing should arise from drawings/hieroglyphic, I think - unless it is copied from an existing writing system.

So if you want them to have invented writing independently, hieroglyphs and their further simplification into whatever system you want is the way to go. (Even cuneiform was a simplification of earlier hieroglyph-like drawings.)

But if Tim Ar were in contact with another civilization which knew writing (I am not quite sure from your descriptions), they would most likely take an existing writing system and adjust it to their own language.

OK, thank you. That simplifies things for me considerably. On the ZBB, mèþru had some similar remarks.
All right, so some worldbuilding.

The Khaya Empire (who spoke the language with the Mayan-style hieroglyphs; "Khaya" and "Maya" rhyming was not planned) originated roughly where that big alpine blob is on the eastern continent, near the steppe—the name "Khaya" is a derivative of khay 'plateau'. I haven't figured out how to say "Burning Mountains" in Classical Khaya yet, but I'm thinking their name for the huge mountain range will be the one that gains traction for most of the world. They were more-or-less contemporaneous with the Proto-Tim Ar-O culture, who were rooted more firmly in the steppes and that bit of rainforest north of the Burning Mountains.

The downfall of the Proto-Tim Ar-O empire did not begin with the Khaya, but they didn't help things. They invaded the western part of the Proto-Tim Ar-O culture (this is the area whose descendants ultimately became the Tim Ar) and added it to their holdings. They didn't hold onto it for very long before their own empire collapsed.

The Burning Mountains aren't called "burning" for nothing—volcanic activity is endemic along certain stretches of the mountain chain. The ash deposits made the soil in the nearby environs more suitable for growing things, which helped the Khaya maintain their empire despite the otherwise less-desirable farming prospects. (Come to think of it, it would make sense if their empire collapsed due to crop failures.)

The first syllabary I've developed out of the Classical Khaya monumental script was only one development of the script, but it proved an influential one. The Khaya scripts will probably be quite divergent, due to the different simplifications made when writing the glyphs on paper or bark as opposed to carving it in stone.

The Tim Ar (and O, and other related people groups) bounced around various empires following the collapse of the Proto-Tim Ar-O empire, but they eventually gained a reputation as efficient mercenaries (acknowledgment to mèþru on the ZBB for sparking this idea).

I'm thinking there will be a few other places where it appears—this isn't like Earth where its development was restricted to the Middle East, China, and Mesoamerica. There will of course be script systems that are not really descended from other systems but are influenced by them (cf. Cherokee script or Inuktitut syllabics).

The Uhuiquenta /uwikenta/ were a people who were contemporaneous with the Classical Khaya civilization. They notably invaded the lands occupied by what would become the Tim Ar; one theory is that this language influenced the development of tone in Ngade n Tim Ar, and the language is demonstrably a source of loanwords that would violate constraints originating from Tim Ar historical phonology.

/m n ŋ/ m n g
/t k ʔ/ t c/qu ʔ
/f s/ s
/w l/ hu l

/u a e i/ u a e i

Three tones: High, mid, low (á a à)

Nasals assimilate to the place of a following consonant.
/f/ has an allophone [p], written p, after /m/.
/w/ is deleted after /ŋ/.
A sequence /ʔʔ/ reduces to /ʔ/.
/wu/ surfaces as [wo] huo.

I like this a lot, especially the two verbs for "to go". I am slightly confused by the orthography, though. Why use a digraph "qu" for /k/ if you don't use either "c" or "k"? Not criticizing, just curious.

gestaltist wrote:I like this a lot, especially the two verbs for "to go". I am slightly confused by the orthography, though. Why use a digraph "qu" for /k/ if you don't use either "c" or "k"? Not criticizing, just curious.

It looks like a purposefully Spanish orthography. Look at huo for /wo/

If you're one of the Tim Ar…
…you feel the death penalty is an appropriate and necessary punishment for the three capital crimes—treason, murder, and rape.
…your name is a nominalized sentence followed by ré and then the names of your parents (though normally you only state one of them for most purposes, the parent of the same sex as you). Everybody calls you by only one word of the sentence (É3enghuúühé is "Khuú", for example), though, unless they're mad.
…rules and regulations, in general, are oppressive. Communities have their own cultures; let them be.
…you count to ten instead of six, eight, or twelve, and you're proud of it.

"MARTOK! MARTOK! MARTOK!"

The head of the government, in ceremony and in duty, is the Imperator, and he's a descendant of the original. (He can't really pass any acts by fiat, though—that's best left to the lower houses—though he does have the final say over the military.)

An additional position passed down from father to son is that of the Imperatorial griot. It's troubling that he's so bent to the influence of those meddlesome humans, but at least he stands with the Tim Ar when the chips are down.

If you're from one of the original provinces, you have an additional hereditary official that you either adore or despise (except if you're from that unfortunate area whose lineage died out and is now peerless). Newer provinces don't deserve such influence—older is wiser.

You've been frustrated by the differences between the the provinces' legal codes—and sometimes between different communities in your own province.

You have a say in petitioning and, in the case of the lower houses, electing your government.

Doing a few favors for friends in high places is one thing, but full-blown corruption is intolerable.

The balance of tradition and contemporary practices in the government pleases you—each tempers the other.

The idea of a United Nations-type body rubs you the wrong way. There are civilized behaviors that should just be unspoken for all nations.

It is tantamount to a duty to conquer and civilize those who would attack you.

Sometimes, you seriously think that if it weren't for the Imperator, the provinces would declare war on each other.

Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

It's unusual if your country is not at war with someone, and it's almost depressing when that happens.

Someone in your family is a veteran of some form or another. Multiple someones, more than likely.

Your people have been passed around various governing bodies for the past several millennia, and your final independence was hard-earned and well-deserved.

Anyone who voluntarily chooses to be a part of the space defense force is insane. Commendable, but insane.

It's incomprehensible why anyone would abide a government that institutes a draft. If you force someone who doesn't want to go to war to fight, don't be surprised if you get poor quality.

You can identify which of those bright dots in the sky are bladeships and take pride in the fact that only your country has built them.

Your home is your castle. If you're a man, it's your duty to defend it.

If someone on your continent disrespects the Homeland, remind them that you quite literally saved them from an invasion four hundred years or so ago.

"Enemy! Barbarian lover!"

Rainbow Dash is the best pony. She's the Element of Loyalty and performs awesome feats.

Loyalty is the noblest virtue, fiercest by default for families and incredibly strong for your friends, your business associates, and those who descend from the original culture all those years ago. The central government comes first, then your province.

The culture of your province is the best of all the provinces. The culture of your nation is superior to that of all other nations.

Helping out allied countries is your duty, and it's theirs in kind when you need it.

Why do the Mute Caber get hated on so much by the other Caber? They are Caber, regardless of what their ancestors did.

You view immigrants with cautious optimism—provided they jump through the hoops and assimilate, one set of hands at work is as good as another.

Stabbing someone in the back or selling out to someone else is the worst thing you can do short of the big three crimes—and even then, there's a reason treason is one of them.

Why would anyone want to travel the world? You'll never find anything as good as home.

It's possible to get by only knowing two languages—your local dialect and the Imperatorial standard.

You can often tell where someone's from in ten seconds by listening to how they speak. If they use the second-person plural pronoun, you'll know instantly.

We have the best economic policies, don't we, folks?

Capitalism, from the smallest farm to the biggest corporate headquarters, is obviously the best policy.

You respect farmers very deeply—there's a lot of them in your territory and they work hard to feed people (or at least get them high).

It's cause for a party whenever a Täptäg comes to town. They're very good for local businesses.

You stick with the brands you know unless you have a very good reason to switch.

The flat tax is the only fair tax. Ten percent of one billion is more than ten percent of one thousand, and anything otherwise is bullying.

Help for the poor is best handled by the people, not the government.

You've been turned down for at least one job for a frivolous reason.

You may have had a few different jobs when you were a teenager or college-age adult, either to pay tuition or just for some extra spending money to blow on useless stuff, but once you've been an adult for a few years and have settled in what you trained for, switching careers is almost unthinkable. (The only exception is if you go off and join the military for a few years—doing that is reasonably common, and you can expect your job to be waiting for you when you get back.)

Those who hate your country should remember the fact that you probably export a good amount of food to them.

What's the big deal with pollution, anyway? Aren't plants supposed to get rid of that?

Cupid's got an arrow and you're wearing the bullseye

What's the big deal with arranged marriages? So long as the prospective participants have final approval over it, it's a system that works well.

Love is for teenagers. Marriage is for adults.

Marriage is for producing children and forging bonds. Love doesn't necessarily factor into it.

Your government doesn't do much besides recognize the union for record-keeping and tax purposes. If your religion has anything special to say about it, they handle it.

Most unions are between one man and one woman. Sometimes you get polyandry or polygyny—it used to be rarer, but it's becoming worryingly prominent of late.

If your wife has an affair, well, that's the way it goes. Don't take it personally.

If your husband has an affair, you didn't deserve that from him (unless he's a soldier or travels a lot, in which case what happens while he's away stays there).

If you're not a farmer, it's not surprising if you weren't married off until you were thirty or so—you had to deal with college and job training first.

You better have a good reason for obtaining a divorce. Being a divorcé(e) is tantamount to being a persona non grata.

It's puzzling why the Imperator hasn't remarried. After all, his wife died and left him only a daughter, and how's she supposed to run things when he kicks the bucket?

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, don't ask me how because neither planet is habitable

If you need something done properly, ask a woman. If you need something done fast, ask a man.

You're fine with women working as long as they don't have kids to take care of. Men are supposed to be the breadwinners.

If a man cannot support his family, he is a failure. If a woman does not support her family, she is a failure.

A man is not less a man, nor is a woman less a woman, for being homosexual.

It is shameful and dishonorable for women to do battle.

Men can be abused too, and someone of either sex is well within their rights to fight back if abused.

The eastern continent is downright bizarre and backwards, what with so many matriarchal cultures.

You feel more than a bit of trepidation at the very real possibility that the Imperator's daughter will lead the country someday.

Mothers name the female children, fathers name the male children.

The Tlar Canà are your sworn enemies and your country's greatest failure, the one eastern influence they couldn't get rid of.

Time for someone to absolutely mangle the national anthem

When you came of age, if your family could afford it, they gave you a gun. You carry it almost everywhere.

The Rock is a very popular vacation spot and a national treasure.

You enjoy the right of free travel between the provinces of your country.

Even though foreigners aren't so good, and foreign food and media, good though they be, aren't as good as home-grown.

You know what orbital hockey is and follow it almost rabidly, even if you've never been to a match yourself. Your home team is the best.

The saman úd, a type of stringed instrument, is as much a Tim Ar cultural icon as the ideal of loyalty is. In your childhood you dreamed of being an ashik, wandering the country with your (metaphorical) axe.

You've been to the capital at least once.

You don't give a second look to a fistfight. If they're friends, they'll be back on good terms by the end of the night, if not the scuffle; if they're not, it's somebody's fault.

The Burning Mountains are often romanticized—as they should be.

Someone of a different religion than you may be an annoyance, but as long as they're not plotting to overthrow the government it's best to let them live as they will.